Currents

You can 't do much work on a computer, these days, without encountering PDF files. "PDF" stands for "Portable Document Format," which relates to their 'portability' from one computer and operating system to another. These files can include images, charts, and tables, as well as richly-formatted text. When you print them, they look very much like what you see on the screen.

I encounter PDF files most often as documentation files for software and hardware. Very often, installer programs for software and hardware drivers offer to install Adobe Reader just so you can read how to use them.

Some of the most colorful, expletive-laden exclamations uttered under my breath have been inspired by a) waiting for unbelievably long periods of time for Adobe Reader to load, b) seeing how much of my computer's memory is being grabbed by that program, or c) being interrupted from reading a PDF file by the need to update Adobe Reader and reboot. And, to create these files, Adobe would have you buy their Adobe Acrobat PDF file creator, which costs an arm and a leg in any of its versions.

That said, it can't be denied that the idea of PDF files is a good one:Portable, device-independent files that every machine can properly interpet.

Fortunately, some very good, free programs have been created to both create and read PDF files, and that is the subject of two new Short Takes:

Foxit PDF Reader

Bullzip PDF Printer

 

Jango is one of the more recent entries in the internet radio field -- still in beta, in fact -- and seems to be addressing the money problems that face such services by hooking up its users into a social network. Getting users to hang around on the site, and more importantly to continue interacting with the site, is the key to getting more advertising dollars.

Pandora is not the only internet radio service available, but it may well be the most interesting. Pandora is based on the 8-year-old Music Genome project, which has spent all that time deciphering and encoding the characteristics of thousands of songs for your musical pleasure.

Friends and relatives have kept me pinned down to the subject of digital photography for a while now, and I think we have a pretty good repository of material accumulated on that subject. So, I'm hoping everyone will forgive me if I move on to some other interesting things.

We've long had the idea that we should do short videos on tips and tricks that would be useful to almost everyone if they knew about them. Recently, we settled on calling these 'Short Takes,' and I added a couple of new ones this week. If you're really savvy, you probably already know about at least some of these, but I'm trying to hit the middle of the stream, here.

The long silence had to mean something, right? We've been busy, and now we can finally show you the results of the effort.

Obviously, the site has a new look. You can thank my wife and partner, Kathy, for that. She has joined the effort in recent months and she's a terrific designer. Also, I've introduced some changes to the Guides, themselves. The changes are much more than cosmetic, as I think you'll see:

• The Guides pop out of the screen, and can be moved around to see what's behind them. This allowed us to gain valuable screen real estate for both larger videos and more supporting written material, even for lower resolution monitors.
• We will often use some of this new space in the video window for a table of contents that remains in front of you, tracking your progress through a range of topics as you watch. When the video is fully loaded, you can click on these topics randomly to move directly to the pieces that most interest you, or that you want to review.
• The new videos (and perhaps some of the older ones, as I get around to it) can go full screen, to provide a much better view of the action.
• We're introducing closed captioning to make the Guides more accessible to the hearing impaired.

We're introducing the notion of membership. Basic membership is free, but will provide benefits -- including bonus Guides -- not available to non-members. In the not too distant future, we will introduce Premium membership, which will introduce even more benefits, for a very small fee. Basic members who sign up now will be our Charter members, and will get a break on that fee.

Hey, after a plague of personal health distractions, it's great to be back among the living. It's left me lots of time to think about what comes next, and it's going to be a fairly significant project: Getting Control of Your Digital Photos.

Featured Software:
  Microsoft Photo Info, Piky Basket, Duplicate Cleaner

I'm calling this a 'project' because there are different aspects to this problem that require different pieces of software. I started with the assumption that all most people really need to organize, edit, and share their photos is a single program like Picasa, which is a very powerful program, indeed. However, I have come to think that there are some steps to take on the organization front before bringing in Picasa

If you aren't yet convinced that you should use a different, strong password to access any information you don't want compromised, I recently ran across this piece, which is downright scary.

In keeping with past habits, I'm presenting a second solution to the problem at hand, which in this case is password management. The first, KeePass, is a program that you download and run on your own computer. There is another approach, which is an online password manager. In this scheme, your data is stored on a remote server, and you access it with a web browser.

Featured Software:
   PassPack Online Password Manager

Aren't passwords a pain in the patootie? Can't live with ‘em, can't live without ‘em. How do you manage your passwords? For too many people, I suspect, the answer is, "Not very well."

You basically have two choices in dealing with passwords, which are 1) committing them to memory, or 2) writing them down/recording them somewhere. Each approach has its advantages and drawbacks. If you commit passwords to memory, chances are you use one or a few of them over and over again. You have probably chosen passwords that are relatively easy to remember, and may be relatively easy for a determined hacker to discover.

Featured Software
  KeePass Password Manager

I spend so much time scouring the net for great software that it would be criminal of me not to share my best sources with you -- particularly the free stuff.

I can't vouch for everything you'll find at these sites, but I can say each has lots of great software available for download.  These sites generally categorize things well, so before you buy commercial software, you can look and see if there is something available here.  Oftentimes, the free software is a limited version of a more fully-featured commercial product, which you can try out before you buy.

I'm back from summer vacation and trying to focus on getting some work done, in spite of the nasty case of poison ivy I picked up while I was camping on Cape Cod. This plant is just plain mean, for no good reason that I can think of...

*****

Although it's sometimes annoying, I get some warm fuzzies from Windows Update, because I like the idea that I have the most recent bug fixes for the software I'm using. What Windows Update does for the operating system, Secunia PSI does for applications, but only to the extent of finding software updates that plug security holes. If a piece of software I'm using has a new version available that fixes other kinds of bugs, or adds new capabilities, I would also like to know about that.

Featured Software:
FileHippo Update Checker